Exercise Update,

 I am on a quest to put regular exercise into my life. I report on it here weekly to keep myself accountable. Here's what this week looked like.

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Line Dancing: The regular line dancing classes at the gym were canceled, so we took the opportunity to go to the line dance that is held every Thursday in the next town. We stayed for a couple of hours, and I did some good aerobic dancing. But the amazing part of the night was that we managed to get Wally to come with us. And he actually tried some of the dances. If you knew Wally, he was really out of his comfort zone, so we were surprised and pleased that he came and he danced.

Friday, June 6, 2025

Strong and Balanced: The class was not too strenuous, but all of my major and minor muscle groups got a workout. The crowd was in a friendly, good mood, which helped make the class enjoyable.

Line Dance: We went to another line dance event a couple of towns away. It was held in an old barn, and the grounds and barn made for a great venue. We stayed for about 3 hours, and I danced a lot because as I get to know more dances, I do more of them. The only problem with the barn was that it had no air conditioning. There were plenty of fans and big, open doors, but I was doing a lot of dancing and consequently sweating a lot. But it was fun.

Friday night's line dance was held in the Springfield Barn.
The barn is over 200 years old and is one of the biggest barns in Maryland.

Saturday, June 7, 2025

Free Day: After the active last two days, I took it easy today and spent most of the day picking and pitting cherries. Don't remember doing anything extra for exercise.

We have been picking and freezing cherries every day.
 Pitting cherries is tedious work.

Sunday, June 8, 2025

Free Day: We took a trip to the county seat to get the lay of the land and parking for jury duty I have next week. After that, we decided to take a walk along a riverwalk in the town. We thought we could get some good walking in, but it turns out there was an arts festival going on with lots of vendors and people making anything more than a stroll impossible. But enjoyed ourselves perusing the various talented artists who were displaying their art. We walked around for about an hour before the rain came, and we headed home. That evening, I was feeling restless, so I took a walk around the neighborhood.

We saw many things we liked, but didn't buy anything.

Monday, June 9, 2025

Strong and Balanced: The class today was more challenging than it has been at times. We used a step, weights, and bands for some good strength training. There was an emphasis on getting your heart rate up today, so in addition to getting good strength training, it was also an aerobic workout.

Walk: Because I got some aerobic work in during the morning class, I decided to forgo the afternoon Zumba class I was considering and took a walk around the neighborhood instead. It was about 1 1/2 miles at a good pace.

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Line Dancing: Another fun morning of dancing and joking. And the teacher brought mimosas for everyone. Among other things, we learned the Texas Waltz today. It was difficult to switch my brain from 4/4 time, which most of the dances have, to the 3/4 time of the waltz, but I managed. This is a dance that can be done as a couple, so Ward and I hope to learn that. It was a good hour of movement, but not exhausting.

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Express Sculpt: This was a 30-minute session of intense strength training, incorporating weights and mat work. The instructor was no-nonsense and didn't waste one second of the class. It was definitely fatiguing, and I wasn't strong enough to do all the exercises without modification.  I think this was one of those classes that was good for me, but not necessarily fun.

Ward has a protein drink after each exercise class, and I joined him today with a small one. I am not that interested in animal protein (although I do eat it), so it's hard for me to get enough protein in my diet. This is another way to do that.

Until next time...

Learning

I have several new electronics that are filled with more functions than I will ever need, but I'm trying to learn some of them because they are useful. But motivation is a problem because I'm old enough to have known a world before a computer was attached to everything (and it was quite a fine world, at that), so I'm not driven to be tech savvy. However, I've been trying to get out of my lazy comfort zone and embrace the new possibilities that are before me. And that's a whole lot of words to say: I tried out the camera on my new cell phone this weekend on another visit to Carroll Creek Park. More study and practice are needed, but below are a few pictures of our walk.

One end of the park is filled with kinetic sculptures that all move with the wind. This one is "The Tree of Life". 

If you look closely, you can see how it got its name.

"Rotary Lotus" The petal levels of this one turn in different directions.

"Three Little Birds" If you look closely among the leaves, you will see two flying birds on the ends of the top cross arm. The third one is perched on the lowest branch.

"Together as One"

"Water Lily with Dragon Fly"

"Murmuration"

"An Elusive Kinetic Portrait" When the angle is correct, you can see the portrait of Theophilus Thompson in the middle, the earliest documented African American chess expert. He wrote a book on chess published in 1873.

 There were many more beautiful things to see along the waterway, but I'll leave you today with just the kinetic sculptures. 

Until next time...

A City Walk

Last Friday, Ward said he wanted to get out of the house because he hadn't been outside for a week except to take the trashcan to the curb one morning. I was surprised because I had been out several times to go to work and hadn't noticed that he hadn't gone anywhere.  So he could get out of the house, we took the afternoon off and went exploring in a new-to-us park. We were looking for something with paved paths since anything else would have probably been either icy, muddy, or both. I layered up and survived was warm against the cold wind, but true to form, Ward found it invigorating.

Here are a few pictures from our walk.

We visited Baker Park which is in the middle
 of the small city of Frederick. In case you can't read the sign, 
"Baker Park, Opened June 3, 1927. 
To provide wholesome recreation for the people,
safe, sane amusement for the children,
this park is dedicated to the welfare of the community."
I wonder what "sane amusement" is.

There is a 70' bell tower honoring Joseph Baker who is the park's namesake. 
It has 49 carillon bells and they give concerts on Sunday.

The park also houses a large amphitheater. 

It is mostly known for housing band concerts, but obviously gives a nod to theater.

Adjacent to Baker Park is the linear park that we have visited before.

We saw colorful sculptures...

...as well as the colorful boat display we visited a couple of months ago at night
when they were all lit up. We saw a whole different set of details during the daytime.

And what park visit would be complete without seeing ducks?

A Sail Through the Park

Ward and I had a fun evening this week when we visited Carroll Creek Linear Park. We discovered the park last summer, and we enjoyed walking along its central canal which was lined with beautiful flowers and walkways. This time we we walked at night and saw boats instead of flowers. To bring traffic to the area during the winter, the park sponsors model boat displays mid November through mid February, titled Sailing Through the Winter Solstice. The canal was lined with model boats that we all lit up making a very festive sight. The event is a fund raiser for local charities with money being raised by $1/vote for your favorite boat. Even though this is the fifth year for the event, this first time we had heard of it. We plan to put it on our calendar for next year. Below are pictures of some of the boats we saw.

This was a model of the Snallygaster, a 1/2 reptile and 1/2 bird creature of local legend.

A Linear Park

On the weekends, Ward and I have been trying to take early morning walks before it gets too hot and explore the local area. Recently we have hiked a nature trail and another weekend we walked the historic district of a nearby little town. This weekend, we visited Carroll Creek Linear Park in Frederick, MD. We had gone there years ago and had been meaning to go back. On Sunday, we finally made that happen.

The park was first conceived in the 1970's as flood control to protect historic downtown Frederick. All of the engineering for flood control was built underground and the above ground part was developed into a 1 1/2 long walkway. 

There are many restaurants and business developed along the walkway but none of them were open during our walk-partly because it was Sunday morning and partly because of COVID-19 concerns. That also meant that the crowds were sparse and it was easy to maintain social distancing. Here are a few things we saw along the way.

This is the base of one of the bridges. The unique thing about it is that all of this "stonework" is painting on a flat surface. You have to get very close before you realize this, as it matches other real stonework in other places along the way.